Origins of Fractured Existences
by The CheezHead
Summary: At some point, it stops being Troy and Abed and becomes Troy and Abed and Annie. And the three of them make a home and together the three of them become complete. And this feeling of completeness is so overwhelming for Abed and Annie, because it's been so long since they were anything but broken. But then Troy leaves and they're broken again.


**Origins of Fractured Existences**

Abed is six years old when he breaks. His parents have been arguing for what seems like forever and he knows it's because of him. Knows it's because of all of the tests and the doctors and knows that it's because there's something wrong with him. Knows it in that sad look on his mother's face whenever he squirms in discomfort out of her embrace. Knows it in the hushed conversations he can only catch snippets of from behind closed doors, where they throw around words like _not normal_ and _weird_.

He's watching TV when she says goodbye to him and tells him she's leaving. She tells him that it has nothing to do with him, but he knows instinctively that she's lying. She kisses him on the head and whispers _kocham cię_ in his ear like she always does. His gaze never leaves the screen.

It's one thing to know he's different; it's another thing entirely to know that it drove his mom away. And something inside him breaks at this knowledge, something that, no matter what, he can never seem to mend completely. Watching _Rudolph_ every year with his mom helps keep him from breaking anymore and so does actually having friends at Greendale. But then she stops coming, and worse than that, it's because she has a new family and a new baby that he's sure is perfect and not weird and different like him. And so he shatters, but this time he has friends to help put him back together. It's by no means a perfect fix, but it works well enough. Well enough for him to _almost_ forget that he was ever broken in the first place.

- x -

Annie is thirteen the first time she breaks. Her parents sit her down and explain that they're getting a divorce. It's a small break, merely a fracture, and she can mostly forget about it.

Except without the calming influence of her dad, her mother becomes more and more strict with each passing day. She pushes Annie to be her best, but her best never seems to be quite good enough. And the summer before senior year of high school, the _most_ important year as far as her mother is concerned, the pressure breaks her just a little bit more.

So she looks up the symptoms of ADHD online one night and slyly hints the next day about an inability to focus and the next thing she knows she's seeing a specialist and has the prescription in her hand. She convinces herself that now, _now_ with this extra little boost, she'll finally be good enough for her mother.

She isn't.

So she starts taking more and more of those little blue pills and soon she forgets the real reason she wanted them. They were supposed to be a means to an end. Now the way she feels when she takes them is the end in itself. She feels in control, for what is maybe the first time in her life. And she keeps taking and taking them, filling multiple prescriptions at once, travelling a few towns over, pretending that these pills are fixing the broken parts of her. The truth is they're only breaking her more.

And then one day, it all comes to a head. She pushes it too far and there's no denying it anymore. She needs help. All her mother will do is ignore the problem and attempt to sweep it under the rug, but Annie knows that won't help anything. So she does the only thing she can and checks into rehab.

Rehab makes her realize just how broken she had become and slowly the pieces of herself are mended back together. But it's short lived and once she leaves rehab and goes home, she finds all of her belongings packed up with instructions from her mother to get out. And the flimsy repair from rehab just isn't enough and again she's broken.

Going to Greendale and finding friends helps put the pieces back together. But she can't help but worry that because she's been broken so many times, it won't take much to do it again.

- x -

She's amazed when Troy and Abed ask her to move in with them. The two of them are such an entity that to be included in that makes her feel happy in a way she's never experienced before. And at some point after she moves in, it stops being Troy and Abed. At some point, it becomes Troy and Abed and Annie. And the three of them make a home and together the three of them become complete. And this feeling of completeness is so overwhelming for Abed and Annie, because it's been so long since they're anything but broken.

Even though the expulsion from Greendale is hard on them, it doesn't break them again. The seven of them still have each other, so everything will all be okay. Things are not been great, but as long as they're complete, they'll be alright in the end (and if things are not alright, then it is not yet the end).

But then Troy leaves and with Troy gone, Abed and Annie realize they needed Troy to be complete. Without Troy, the fragilely mended pieces of themselves are broken once again. With just the two of them in the apartment, everything is wrong. Troy and Abed is good, and Troy and Abed and Annie is best, but Abed and Annie just seems completely wrong.

He can't bring himself to leave the apartment anymore. It has taken the greater part of his life to fix the pieces and now that he's broken again he doesn't think he can handle the outside world. There's nothing to stop him from becoming completely shattered beyond repair if something else (anything else) were to go wrong.

Annie acts like she's doing better, but he knows it's because she feels she has to be strong enough for the both of them. But that doesn't change the fact that he hears her crying in her room the night Troy leaves, and he knows she's thinking of her parents who couldn't stay together and to whom she never speaks anymore and he knows she's just as broken as he is.

He wishes he could go comfort her, but he just can't bring himself to move.

- x -

The week after Troy leaves, everyone begins their biology summer course. Everyone that is, except Abed. Annie leaves for Greendale with a sad look in his direction. It either means_ I'm worried about you_, or it means nothing at all because she's had that look on her face for the past week.

When she's gone, he scours the apartment. He doesn't know for sure if she has any left, but he refuses to take any chances. If she becomes any more broken than she already is, then he doesn't think either of them will ever be able to become complete again.

At one point, when she was still a character, before she became Annie, he thought a relapse would be interesting. Logically a Chekov's gun like that would have to go off eventually, resulting in fantastic character development and bringing them all closer together. But she's not a character anymore, she's his Annie and he can't bear the thought of losing any more of her than he already has.

He finds the bottle of pills in a small heart shaped box on the top shelf in her closet. He can tell by the thin layer of dust that the box hasn't been moved since she moved in (and everything that made sense with two people no longer did and three really was company).

He stares at the bottle of little blue pills in his hand. For a second he wonders what it would feel like to take one and immediately rejects the idea. He's being insane. So he goes and he flushes them all down the toilet and puts the bottle back where he found it. It's fitting, he thinks, because now the bottle is as empty as the apartment feels.

- x -

The next day he thinks she's discovered what he's done. She stares at him from the table while he sits in his chair staring at the TV. It's practically impossible to find anything on that doesn't remind him of Troy.

He hears the scrape of the chair and notes that it must be time for her to go to class. He feels her approach him and stand in front of him, wringing her hands, and now he _knows_ she knows what he's done. He gazes up at her and finds her expression unreadable, although admittedly this is normal for him. She opens and closes her mouth several times to speak before hesitantly swooping down and pecking him on the cheek. She extends a murmured goodbye and a small smile. He thinks it means thank you.

It does.

- x -

She pulls out her box the night after her first day back. Greendale just isn't the same without Troy and Abed there. Even the fact that everyone else misses them too doesn't make up for this. Britta corners her in the bathroom, telling her she understands how she feels because she misses Troy too and if Annie ever needs to talk to someone she's there for her. But Annie doesn't want to talk to anyone, except maybe for Troy and the unbroken version of Abed, and so she has to keep herself from biting Britta's head off. Annie knows she is just trying to help, but it doesn't really make up for the fact that Britta just doesn't get it.

Annie doesn't just miss Troy because he's gone. She misses him because he had become part of her and part of Abed and the two of them are incomplete without him. Britta isn't completely broken without Troy, because she was a complete person before him.

Ever since Troy's been gone, she's thought of those little blue pills hidden in the top of her closet. She found them hidden in a box of her belongings after she finished rehab and saved them as a sort of test for herself, to see if she could withstand the temptation. But, standing in the bathroom with Britta, she thinks she'll fail this test tonight. She thinks it might be the first time she'll be okay with failing.

But when she pulls the bottle out (telling herself she's just going to _look_ even though she knows it's a lie), she finds it surprisingly empty. Immediately she knows what's happened. She can't decide if she's furious that he doesn't trust her or grateful for his interference. Eventually she settles on the idea that if he's looking out for her then maybe, _maybe_ he's not as broken as she thought he was.

- x -

As time passes, life is still unbalanced. No matter how they try to make sense of it, two just won't work. Their lives had been built around being a trio and taking Troy away hadn't made them a duo – it made them a fraction.

Abed has trouble sleeping in the blanket fort alone. He finds himself lying awake all night trying to figure out why just knowing that Troy isn't sleeping above him makes such a huge difference. Annie tries to help by sleeping in the top bunk but she's nervous sleeping so high up and knowing it's Annie up there and _not_ Troy somehow makes it worse.

And, when she suggests that he sleep on the top bunk instead, it's just wrong. Even though he used to prefer the top bunk, it's _Troy's_ bed now and he can't even consider sleeping up there for a second.

And somehow knowing Abed can't sleep affects Annie and now she can't sleep either, and somehow every night the two of them wind up sitting awake in the living room together thinking about Troy and wondering if he misses them and is broken too. And neither of them are willing to say it out loud, but the truth is both of them were abandoned and lonely many years before Greendale. Troy was never broken to begin with. He's probably fine.

- x -

The problem is they don't know what to do with just the two of them. Running simulations in the Dreamatorium doesn't work because after being a trio for so long they can't think of scenarios for just two people. Watching TV together is hard because Annie can't bring herself to sit in Troy's chair and its emptiness only serves as a painful reminder of what they are missing.

So they do the only thing they can that makes sense for just two people and begin sleeping together.

It starts when Annie proposes a solution to their sleeping problem. She's having trouble with biology because she's barely slept in weeks. So she points out since Abed can't sleep alone in the blanket fort and she can't sleep in the top bunk, they should try sleeping in her bed together. After all, it's big enough for two and they can't continue on not sleeping for forever.

At first it's weird. But for once the weirdness is not because of Troy's absence, which is a good thing. So they lie side by side in Annie's bed, not making any physical contact until she rolls on her side and kisses him on the cheek like she does every night and he puts his arm around her and hugs her close (even though he generally dislikes physical contact, for her he makes an exception).

And something in this simple gesture moves her to tears and she curls up into him and he rubs circles on her back and he's holding her close when she sobs out, "I miss Troy."

It's the first time either of them have spoken his name aloud in the apartment since he's been gone. It catches him so off guard all he can do is offer her back a murmured _me too_ into her hair.

Her crying gently fades away, but he still holds her close, feeling for the first time in a month that maybe he's a little bit less broken. And she's thinking the same thing as she stares up at him with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained checks. And suddenly he finds himself compelled to kiss her and so he does.

Initially she's shocked, but slowly she reciprocates and finally, _finally_ there's something that makes sense with just the two of them. And so they keep going, peeling off layer after layer until their bodies are joined, completely and in every sense of the word. And in the aftermath, when they're both still curled together and on the brink of sleep for the first time in a long time, Abed realizes that maybe, _maybe_ even without Troy, the two of them can be complete.


End file.
